The keys to the new Law for the Protection of Children
The Plenary of Congress has approved the Law for the Protection of Children and Adolescents, an initiative that reforms important laws in different areas: from adoption and foster care to orphan's pensions, the conditions of centers for young people with behavioral disorders or the right to hear in judicial proceedings.
Next, we tell you some of the main keys of this new and important law that affects children and adolescents throughout Spain and that the Government has described as "a widely agreed law that takes as its starting point a law that was made by the previous government", in the words of the Health Minister, Alfonso Alonso.
Civil Code, child protection law, Immigration Law, Social Security, Dependency, Gender Violence ... are just some of the laws that touches this new regulation, the Child Protection Law, which even plans to create new measures or to agglutinate those that already apply some autonomous communities.
Welcome and adoption of children
In the system of reception and adoption priority will be given to foster care for children under six years of age and the process will be dejudicialized. This means that the administration will decide where the homeless child will stay and that the resource of the biological parents will not "condemn" the child to remain in a center while the matter is decided, as has been happening up to now.
Hereinafter, the declaration of helplessness is defined by unifying criteria at the state level so that it is not different between the communities, and can not be declared only based on the poverty or disability of the parents. Also, the biological parents can appeal such a declaration but while the appeal is resolved the child will be in a host family.
Welcome centers
Another novel aspect of this new law is that it sets the minimum conditions and regulates the functioning of the reception centers of homeless children or children with behavioral disorders: the entry and exit requirements will be regulated and also the disciplinary measures that can be adopted (or not).
Host families
As regards the host families, these will be evaluated by public administrations and should prove their suitability. Likewise, they may be in an autonomous community different from the child's, since an interterritorial reception mechanism will be created that allows an autonomous government to resort to another one in case it does not have at that time families to accommodate the minors in a situation of helplessness.
The law also contemplates the creation of a open adoption system for cases in which the child wants and can continue to maintain a relationship with his biological family. Likewise, common criteria will be established to prepare foster parents for adoption, the right of children to know their origin and past will be regulated and a unified record of child abuse will be created to which they will have access. Social services throughout the country.
Children victims of violence
This reform also deals with the children victims of gender violence: declares the children of the victims as subjects that need to be protected by the same law that helps their mothers. In addition, it introduces changes in domestic violence: there will be a modification of the pension system to prevent those who kill a relative from receiving the pension that his death has generated, whatever it may be.
Children of marriages in which one of the spouses kills the other may, in addition, charge the full orphan's pension even if the homicidal father or mother is still alive. Moreover, the pension will be larger, as it will be recognized one hundred percent of the regulatory base (until now it was a percentage on it).
Workers with children
Another novelty is the prohibition that those convicted of crimes against the integrity, liberty or sexual indemnity of minors may work in something related to children or adolescents. This is intended to be achieved through a central register of sex offenders to which all those who want to work with children must go to get a certificate that proves that they have no record of these crimes.
Angela R. Bonachera
